Which to use
“your” is a determiner and “yours” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #31
- “your” frequency rank
- #1,849
- “yours” frequency rank
- 1880
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | your | yours |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Belonging to you; of you; related to you (singular; one owner). | That or those belonging to you; the possessive second-person singular pronoun used without a following noun. |
Where the eye mixes your and yours
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: your is /jɔː(ɹ)/ while yours is /jɔː(ɹ)z/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “your” sits inside “yours”, and the parts of speech differ too (determiner vs pronoun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 1880, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
your is recorded at frequency rank #31, classified as adet, pronounced /jɔː(ɹ)/. yours is at rank #1,849, tagged as apron, pronounced /jɔː(ɹ)z/.
Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.
With a confusion score of 1880, this pair ranks #526,400 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of your vs yours
Shared letters: oruy. Private to "your": -. Private to "yours": s.
"your" · 4 letters · shape VVVC · "yours" · 5 letters · shape VVVCC